Texas top-ranked high schools don’t prepare most kids for college, data show

A majority of students at the top-rated high schools in Texas are likely to need remedial course work when they get to college because they don’t score well enough on entrance exams, a Hearst Newspapers analysis of newly released school accountability data shows.

A majority of students at the top-rated high schools in Texas are likely to need remedial course work when they get to college because they don’t score well enough on entrance exams, a Hearst Newspapers analysis of newly released school accountability data shows.

More than 900 high schools in the state received the equivalent of an A or B ratingfrom the state lastmonth. But the analysis shows that at two-thirds of thoseschools, the majority of students are failing to score high enough on the SAT or ACT to be considered “college ready,” increasing the chances that they’ll need remedial course work in college and jeopardizing their chances of getting a college diploma.

The lownumber of Texasstudents whoareadequately prepared for college hasemergedagainas an issue as state lawmakers study education funding this fall, in preparation for the Legislative Session, which starts in January. At a meeting Tuesday,education committee chairman Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, and Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, recommended giving more money to schools for each student who scores college-ready on the entrance exams.

Another group of lawmakers studying the performance of Texas schools, including Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, recommended that Texas do away with the STAAR test, the state standardized exam,and instead use the SAT or ACT to hold high schools accountable.

The state’s top education official says Texas is steadily raising the bar for what students are expected to learn, and schools are improving.

But education experts say the combination of high ratings and low college readiness scoresexposes a major flaw in the state’s accountability system. They say the gap is proof that lawmakers are placing too much emphasis on improving scores on the STAAR and high school graduation rates, rather than on preparing students for what happens after they finish high school.

“To get an A means this school is doing a good job of getting an increasing number, and a majority number, of its students ready for the next stage in life,” said Sandy Kress, a former senior adviser for George W. Bush and one of the architects of No Child Left Behind, the law that brought accountability ratings to schools across the country. “You have no business getting an A if you can’t tell me that.”

Some schools, especially in rural areas, may focus more on preparing students for careers after high school, rather than college.

But Hearst Newspapers also analyzed career-readiness data, which includes students enlisting in the military or receiving an industry certificate. Of the schools earning the state’s top ratings, none was preparing the majority of its students for careers after high school. The highest percentage was in Cumby High School, about 65 miles northeast of Dallas. Thirty-nine percent of its students met career standards. About 3 percent tested at a college-ready level.

Low college graduation rates and career attainment have troubled lawmakers in Texas for years. They set a goal in 2015 that by 2030, 60 percent of Texas high school graduates would earn an industry certificate or a post-secondary degree within six years. The state has a long way to go — only 25 percent of students from the class of 2009 met that goal.

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath declined to be interviewed and did not respond to questionssent by email, instead releasing a statement:

“Well-rounded college and career readiness measures have been added to the A-F system for the first time, which reflects a substantial increase in expectations for our schools and our students,” Morath said. “Over time, this additional focus will result in more kids being well prepared for college and career coming out of our high schools.”

Students are “college ready” if they score at least a 530 on the math portion of the SAT and a 480 on the reading and writing portion, according to TEA documents. The top score is 800 for each portion of the test. Student taking the ACT need a 23 composite score, out of a top score of 36, and at least a 19 on the math and reading portion.

Students who don’t hit those markscan still get into college, but the measure can predict how well they will perform in freshman writing and math courses. Some students may be admitted, but they’ll have to take remedial courses, which do not count toward graduation and are expensive, increasing tuition costs and potentially delaying graduation.

How we did this story

Hearst Newspapers analyzed school accountability data from the Texas Education Agencyfor the 2017-2018 school year.

We identified the high schools that received a score equivalent to an A or B. We then looked at the measure that identifies what percentage of students scored at or above the college-ready level on the SAT, ACT or Texas Success Initiative Assessment. We also looked at the measure that identifies how many students met career-aligned goals in order to gauge how well schools are preparing students for both college and career.

Finally,for schools that received A’s and B’s,we determined if the percentage of students scoring college-ready or meeting career standards.

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Testing that matters

In SanAntonio’sNorthside ISD, eight schools earned an A or B overall rating from the state. Half of those are preparing less than 40 percent of their students to be college ready, based on SAT and ACT scores.

Debbie Ritchey’s son and daughter attended Northside schools, and she remembers being troubled by how many state-mandated exams they had to take. Now that they’ve both graduated from college, she wishes their high school would have focused more on preparing them for the SAT or ACT, rather than making them take tests that are rarely considered by colleges. Both had to take the college entrance exams multiple times before getting the scores that gave them the best chance of admission and scholarship opportunities.

“If you teach them correctly, and you have the best teachers in there, they should be able to take those ACT and SAT tests and do fine getting into college,” Ritchey said.

Her daughter, Emily, graduated from Stevens High School in 2008 and was required to take a summer math course before enrolling at Texas State University in San Marcos. Still, Emily graduated college within four years and is now a teacher.Ritchey’s son required no remedial work and made it through college in four years as well.

At Cypress-Fairbanks ISD outside Houston, the third-largest districtin the state, all 10 high schools earnedan “A” or “B.” But the majority of students at seven of the schools are not scoring high enough on the SAT or the ACT to be considered college ready.

Cypress Creek High School, for example, earned an 86, the equivalent of a B, but less than 40 percent of students are meeting college-readiness standards. Jersey Village High School also received a B, but only 36 percent of students are college ready.

Nikki Cowart, a parent with children in Jersey Village High School, said she was shocked to hear seven high schools at Cy-Fair high schools had high percentages of students who didn’t meet college-readiness requirements. She is very happy with the education her children are getting there.

“It’s not indicative of what I am seeing,” Cowart said.

Her son Landon was enrolled in an ACT prep course at Jersey Village, which helped him get into the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houstonthis fall. She said he is doing very well in his course work so far.

A spokeswoman for Cy-Fair ISD said the district is working to increase college readiness. The district pays for all juniors to take the ACT. The district is also increasing its dual-credit offerings, giving students a chance to take community college courses that also earn them high school credits, said Leslie Francis, the spokeswoman.

‘Afraid to be honest’

The new accountability system, which debuted this summer, gives school districts and campuses letter grades that are designed to make it easy to understand if a school is meeting expectations. But the system gives schools a lot of credit for improvement on state standardized exams, graduation rates and other measures that may not predict how well students will do in college. A parent may see an A on a campus report and not dig deeper into the data, which may show that students are not scoring high enough on college exams to avoid remedial course work.

Kress and others say the state needs to be upfront with parents if high schools are not preparing the majority of students for college and career. While they agree the new accountability system has improved, they recommend the state give greater weight to SAT or ACT scores so that parents know if a school is underperforming.

“In Texas, we have a long history of failing to call it what it is,” Kress said. “We are afraid to be honest about evaluation. In this case, we really do our kids a disservice by over-grading schools, especially when they are coming out of our schools not ready for college and career.”

The Commission on Public School Finance, a group of lawmakers and educators studying how to better fund schools, recently discovered that students lose loan and Pell Grant money to pay for remedial English or math classes that do not count for credit.

At a meeting Tuesday, a working group of the legislative committee examining state educationspending recommended an incentive programoffering more money to schools whose graduates receive an industry-accepted certificate, enlist in the military or enroll in college without needing remedial courses. The state could also offer more money to schools that achieve those goals for low-income students. The working group also said school staff need to help more students fill out financial aid forms when they apply for college because Texas forgoes more than $500 million in federal Pell Grants annually because students don’t apply for them. Unlike student loans, the grants don’t need to be paid back.

“We lose a ton of kids (between high school and post-secondary),” said Todd Williams, a member of the work group and the education policy adviser to Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings. “High schools are incentivized to graduate kids, per the accountability system, but they are not historically incentivized for them to be ready to access the next level. We need to figure that out.”

Alejandra Matos is a politics and government reporter for the Houston Chronicle's Austin bureau. She previously covered local education for the Washington Post and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She is a graduate of American University in Washington D.C. and the University of Texas at El Paso.